


Slow it Down

by twelvedaysnorthofhopeless



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-16
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-08 16:35:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/763584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twelvedaysnorthofhopeless/pseuds/twelvedaysnorthofhopeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They close the gates of hell for good on June 15th, 2014.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow it Down

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: I officially decided today that this is going to be a 'verse!! I'm working on figuring out now what I want to include in it, but it'll just be a lot of Dean and Cas being mind-numbingly fluffy in north Washington. So look forward to updates! :)

                 They close the gates of hell for good on June 15th, 2014. Dean doesn’t remember much in the aftermath—just laying in a crumpled, bruised heap on the blood-soaked floor of an ancient crypt buried somewhere in bumfuck Minnesota, reaching for the dark, unmoving mass on the other side of the room that he prayed wasn’t his little brother. He remembers a pair of steady hands turning him onto his back—“Dean, Dean.”—and looking up into Cas’ face, bloodied and panicked.

                “Cas,” Dean coughs. The inside of his mouth felt thick and tasted like copper. His vision started to flicker out, going dark and fuzzy at the edges, but he could feel a hand slide up his neck to cup the side of his face. Distantly, he knew it was Cas, but for a moment, it felt like his mother. He reached up to meet the fingers trembling at his cheekbone and squeezed them once, firm, before he blacked out.

                Today is June 21st, 7:13 a.m. Dean wakes up to sasquatch arms crushing him and a freakin’ lion’s mane smothering his nose and mouth.

                “Get a damn haircut,” he croaks, his first words in almost a week. Sam pulls back, teary-eyed like a bitch but otherwise—fine. Beautifully, perfectly _fine_. Not a scratch on him, not a bruise to be seen. Dean’s manlier than his brother, though, so the sight doesn’t make his eyes sting and his chest swell with relief that bursts out in a shaky huff of laughter. He claps a hand on Sam’s shoulder, then lays back and takes in the paneled wood walls decked out in nick-knacks, old paintings, and a pair of long, lacy white curtains letting the sunrise in. The bed he woke up in is comfortable, but creaks when he shifts, and the thick sheets smell faintly of saltwater and summer bonfires.

                Sam tells Dean he’s been in the hospital for the last 5 days, but with all the demons left trapped on earth hot on their heels and out for blood, they couldn’t risk staying any longer than it took to get Dean reasonably stable. So Cas brought them to a safehouse Metatron had told him of, a heavily-warded, secluded cabin somewhere on the Washington coast. He sounds a little off when he says it—something that looks like pity drawing his face worn and tired a moment. His eyes meet Dean’s and they both know nothing needs to be said—they’ve both known, known for years, that it was going to happen someday.

                “Where is he?”

                “Not sure. He said he was going to take a walk. He…” Sam swallows, gives a short, humorless laugh before saying, “I guess he probably needs to get used to it.”

                “Well, so do I, if I’ve been out this long,” Dean sighs, sitting up with a wince and reaching down to pull the covers off his legs.

                “Dean, wait—” Sam says, his hand snapping out to grab Dean’s wrist. “There’s…something else. You…”

                “What, Sam?” Dean asks, frustrated. His head is hazy with too much sleep and he’s eager to get out of the damn bed and walk it off. He’s not sure how much he trusts the cabin, either—he wants to check the wards, make sure they’ve got hex bags ready to have on-hand if they stray too far. He wants to make sure no one’s followed them, he wants to grab a beer and sit on the porch, he wants to _move_ , and Sam’s sitting there with this young, shattered look on his face that flashes Dean back to the first time they watched _Homeward Bound_ together and little eight-year-old Sammy couldn’t bear to see the old dog stop at the bottom of the hill and tell the others to go on without him.

                “Sam, _what_?” Dean snaps, yanking his wrist out of his brother’s grip.

                “Dean—” Sam practically whimpers, as Dean reaches down and throws back the thick covers.

                Deep down, he’d already known what he was going to see. Something in the back of his mind had been nagging him since the moment he opened his eyes, but it was like listening to a scratched record—you know, somewhere, that it’s ruined, but you sit and keep listening in the hope that if you close your eyes, if you wait another moment, it’ll keep playing.

                His left leg is cut up, bruised, a little pale, maybe, from laying in a closed room for the last week. His right ends just above where his knee should have been—it rounds off smooth, a few long stripes of stitches the only signs that anything is amiss. That it hasn’t always been that way.

                “Don’t look at me like that,” Dean mutters on reflex, feeling Sam’s eyes on him, wide and fucking weepy, as his own eyes stay fixed on the empty space, the smooth, untouched look of the sheets beside his left leg. No indent, no pulls or wrinkles.

                “Dean…”

                “Give me those,” Dean says, reaching his hand out for the crutches leaning against the end table. He feels like he hadn’t seen them before, but he knows he did. He’d ignored them on purpose.

                “Dean, it won’t be that easy,” Sam warns, putting a hand on his brother’s shoulder that Dean quickly shakes off. “I swiped a chair from the hospital—”

                “Sam,” Dean says, infinitely stronger than he feels, “I’m getting up. You can either help me, or get out.”

                Sam takes a deep breath, shaky, full of enough emotion for the both of them, and lets it out, scooping an arm underneath Dean’s to help him to his feet. Foot. Dean almost laughs at the thought—but then again, he almost cries at it, too. In the end, he does neither.

                He stumbles the minute his foot touches the ground, his body far too eager to steady himself with something that isn’t there anymore. He feels his nails dig into Sam’s arm and has to swipe his free hand across Sam’s chest to twist into his shirt to stop himself from falling over.

                “Fuck,” he hisses between his teeth, trying to ignore the way Sam’s gone completely silent, how the hand he has on Dean’s back is shaking and grips him tight enough to bruise. They make it to the table and, with some effort and barely-contained curses, get the crutches under Dean’s arms. Sam keeps his arms across the length of Dean’s back and chest, immediately ducking down and tightening his hold when his brother pitches forward. Dean rises back up slowly, teeth clenched, his eyes staring wide at the floor. He blinks once, hard, and takes another step. Slowly, the two of them hitch and stumble their way out onto the front porch, where Dean collapses into a cloth chair that protests under the force of his weight—it feels like it hasn’t held someone in a long time. The blue cloth is faded and covered in lint and specks of sand blown up by the wind. Sam slowly lowers the crutches to the ground beside his brother, as Dean breathes deeply and wipes sweat from his forehead. His arms feel numb and prickly, and his leg aches. It shouldn’t surprise him—it’s doing work for two, now. But it does. It does when he adjusts to sit more comfortably in the chair and his other foot doesn’t rest on the wooden porch. It does when he looks up at the sand and the water reflecting the rising sun and he realizes that he’ll never feel the way the wet sand sucks and pulls at bare feet, and the waves crash against ankles and splash the rolled cuffs of his blue jeans. He’s only ever been to the beach once before in his life. Now he’s finally back and he can’t even fucking enjoy it.

                If he’d known that first time, with dad and Sammy at fourteen years old, would be the last time, he knows he would’ve made more of it. He would’ve asked to stay longer.

                “You should eat something,” Sam says, straightening up, tension still tight in his body as he clenches his fists at his sides.

                “In a minute,” Dean says quietly, looking out at the water, flexing his toes against the wood. He sees Sam moving out of the corner of his eye but doesn’t register it until Sam’s shoving his big fleece jacket in Dean’s face.

                “It’s Washington, not South Carolina. The beach gets cold out here.”

                Dean gives him a look—the look, the “are you shitting me” look, where his head flops forward and his eyes scowl up at Sam and he draws his mouth into a tight line. It’s the big brother look, it’s the “I take care of _you_ ,” look, it’s Dean. It’s them. Dean makes Sam laugh when he snatches the coat from his hands and yanks it on, throwing his arms up and raising his eyebrows in a dramatic, “happy now?” Dean figures after a week of Sam worrying at his bedside, probably crying when the doctors told him what Dean had lost, and wanting Dean to wake up just as badly as he dreaded it, seeing his brother act like his usual bitchy self was probably exactly what Sam needed. When Dean waves him off with a flick of his hand and a roll of his eyes, Sam goes without complaint.

                The moment the door shuts behind him, the smile slips from Dean’s face. He leans his head against the back of the chair, feeling the taut cloth give as he pushes against it. He closes his eyes for a minute but it feels like ten; when he opens them again and turns out to the water, the barely-risen sun has only just climbed above the ocean water. Sam was right—the occasional, rough gust coming off the coast lifts his skin in bumps of gooseflesh and almost makes him shudder.

                He slides his hands up and down his thighs to warm them—and stops. He stares down at his right leg, his fingers hovering just over where it suddenly and wrongly ends, and he reaches down and _grasps._ He fights the gasp that threatens to burst out of his throat at the sudden bloom of pain that spreads from the indentations of his fingers and lets his palm slide over the skin. He feels it, and it becomes real.

                It’s real.

                Dean loosens his grip but leaves his hand resting there, thumb sliding back and forth over one of the stitches, and tries to think of nothing but the sound of the waves against the shore.

                He doesn’t look up when he hears the wooden steps creak with soft footfalls, or when the chair beside his groans in a way that implies someone is trying very hard to sit stiff-backed and straight in a chair designed for slouching and slumping.

                “This is the part where you’re supposed to say ‘hello, Dean.’”

                “You heard me coming,” Cas says beside him. “I assumed it was irrelevant.”

                Dean has to huff a laugh at that, a little. Because that’s just it, isn’t it? “Hello, Dean.” It was never just a greeting, it was a gimmick. It was Cas keeping him on his toes; it was Batman vanishing when someone turns their back just before they ask him about his true identity.

                “You doin’ okay?” Dean asks, turning to look at Cas, squinting into the morning sun. He tries to ignore the way the way the sun catches his blue eyes and makes the ocean behind them look grey.

                “I’m…adjusting,” Cas says, his hands lifting up and falling with a flop on his legs in a motion that’s almost like a shrug.

                “It took the last of your grace to get both of us here, didn’t it? You’re on empty?”

                “I’m human,” Cas says simply. He smiles out at the water and looks down to watch his hand sliding over the smooth wood of the chair. “It’s…strange. I had expected to feel more disconnected, less in-tune to the world. Instead, I almost feel more. I feel a part of it. This world is no less of a wonder to me. And neither are you.”

                “Aw, quit it, Cas. I’m blushing,” Dean drawls sarcastically, turning his gaze away. “I’m serious, though, Cas. Without your righteous whatever, we’re basically defenseless here. I obviously…”

                “Dean.”

                “Cas, listen,” Dean says firmly, his eyes suddenly dark and empty, his finger pointing sharp at the center of Cas’ chest. “I don’t care if Metatron’s got this place tattooed like a Hell’s Angel with wards, okay? We’re sitting ducks out here. And if anything happens, I need you to take Sam and haul ass, got it? I’m a dead weight on the road. If we’ve got demons on our tail, you won’t get more than ten miles if you’re stuck worrying about me. I need you to promise me that when the time comes, you’ll make the right decision.”

                “Which is what, exactly?” Cas says, his voice thick with something Dean can’t identify.

                “ _You leave me_ ,” Dean says, holding Cas’ gaze hard and firm, refusing to acknowledge the emotion raging in his eyes before turning away and falling back against the chair. “I’m no good to you anymore, Cas. I can’t move, much less fight. But Sammy…he’s always wanted a chance at a normal life. Maybe if you get him far enough away—”

                “No _good_ to me?”

                Dean feels the chair jerk and groan in protest as Cas is suddenly leaning over him, gripping the armrests and glaring at Dean with eyes that blatantly ignore the fact that Cas can’t smite the living hell out of him, and glow with that familiar, ancient fury.

                “Is that all you think you are? A soldier? A weapon?” Cas growls, his nose just inches from brushing Dean’s, his voice filled with an intensity to match his eyes. “Dean, if you dare to speak about yourself that way in front of me again, I will, as you say, kick your sorry ass.”

                “I’m a hunter, Cas,” Dean hisses, his voice trembling. “It’s all I know, it’s all I have. I’m supposed to go out in a firefight with a wendigo, not crippled in some fucking bed. I’ve tried normal life Cas, and I failed then. You think I’d be any better at it now, like this? You think anyone would even want me like this? What else am I supposed to do, Cas! What am I even capable of, like this?”

                “ _Anything_!” Cas yells.

                Dean is silent, staring up at Cas as the rage and righteousness crumbles into agony, as Cas’ hands slide down the armrests of the chair to grip Dean’s hands in desperation.

                “Why don’t you understand,” Cas whispers. “You are so much more, Dean Winchester. You are incredible, you are _amazing_ , you…”

                “Cas—”

                “You took something ancient and unforgiving from the dawn of time, and in a matter of weeks made it question, and doubt, and feel. You were smaller than the smallest speck of an endless existence, a grain of sand in eternity, Dean, and you changed the work of _God_ ,” one of Cas’ hands slides up to hold Dean’s shoulder, and he smiles, pain and awe battling for dominance in his eyes. “Don’t tell me that didn’t matter. Don’t say that to me.”

                In the end, Cas’ lowers his eyes and pulls away, drawing back up to his full height. Dean, strangely, finds himself missing the warmth of his hands.

                “You asked me if I used the last of my grace to bring you here. It’s true—I did. And it nearly tore me apart,” Cas says, stepping out to the edge of the porch. “But I still had enough strength left to heal you, and I didn’t.”

                “What?” Dean sputters, his mind still struggling to keep up with everything Cas is saying. “Why?”

                “Because I knew,” Cas says slowly, simply. “That you would want me to heal Sam.”

                Dean lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He remembers—the explosion after they finally closed the gates, lying on the floor, reaching for his brother…he never saw how bad Sam’s injuries were. He was amazed to see him here, now, unharmed, but he should’ve known better. He should’ve known it was Cas.

                “His wounds were more severe than I had anticipated. When I finished, I ran to you but,” Cas looks out into the sun, unable to meet Dean’s eyes. “The effect was minimal. I had only traces of my grace remaining…in the end, I could only save one of your legs.”

                _One?_ Dean’s hand tightens over his left leg, feels the muscles tensing there. This was Cas, this was the last of his wings and his glory, and he’d poured it all into Dean. To give him one leg, when he could’ve had none. This was Cas, who, after _saving his brother,_ used the last shreds of his grace for Dean.

                With the expectation that he would _do_ something with it.

                “Healing Sam was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make,” Cas says. “Not because I didn’t care for him, Sam is my friend. Sam is my _best_ friend. But I knew he would live. He would be broken, but he would live. I had to _choose_ which of you to cripple. And all I could hear was you, telling me to look after your little brother. Even so Dean, I…tearing myself away from you to heal Sam, I…”

                Cas’ voice breaks and he trails off, and that’s it. Because deep down, Dean’s known this.  This is the record that’s been skipping over the same words over and over again for the past five years, trapping him in complacency; because as time went on, he forgot the next words of the song and only grew more and more afraid of leaving the familiarity of the same three words to hear what comes after.

                He can’t wait any longer.

                Dean takes a deep breath, his hands moving to grip the armrests of the chair, and pushes. He’s standing just as Cas hears the chair clatter to the floor and sees him about to fall flat on his face.

                “Dean!” Cas dives forward and scoops his hands under Dean’s arms, buckling under his weight but holding him steady. Dean looks up and sees him—the water and the mountains and the trees all dulled behind his face, surprised, confused, hurt, angry, and fucking _radiant_ with the sun lighting him up. He fists his hands into the collar of his coat—that fucking awful coat that reeks like ocean water and sweat because he’s _human_ now, he needs to learn to shower and wash his hands and wear some different friggin’ clothes—and pulls Cas’ face just a breath away from his.

                “Come here,” he whispers, pulling himself the rest of the way in and crashing their lips together gracelessly, with shameless need. Cas’ lips are chapped and cold in the Washington air, but there’s something beautiful about the way Dean’s desperate, almost violent kiss, heats them with his warmth.

                Cas is the first to pull away, but only so that he can gently kiss at Dean’s cheekbone, the corner of his eye.

                “Don’t cry, Dean,” he murmurs, the hand on the back of his neck gently massaging his skin.

                “M’not,” Dean says, though he feels his burning and wet trails tracking through the places Cas kissed.

                “You are.”

                “S’happy crying, Cas. There’s a difference. I’ll teach you.”

                “I think I understand,” Cas whispers, and Dean leans back to see Cas’ eyes red-rimmed and wet, a soft, almost shy smile stretching across his face that Dean can’t help but kiss until it turns into a full-on grin, a laugh.

                This time, when he pulls back, he sees the same fear in Cas’ eyes that he imagines is in his own. Something has started here, something that they might not be ready for, something that they might not understand, something that might not last.

                They both open their mouths to say something—to say that it _feels_ right, that it’s worth a try, that maybe they’ve always needed this—

                And of course Sam chooses this time to come outside.

                “Hey, guys—oh,” Sam freezes just outside the doorway, letting the old wooden screen door slam awkwardly behind him. And this is literally the, legitimately, gayest thing Sam has ever caught Dean doing. There’s no way to reason why Cas’ hand is fisted in Dean’s hair and Dean’s lips are covered in spit that doesn’t belong to him, why every inch of their bodies is pressed against each other and Dean’s arms are around Cas’ shoulders. “Should—should I—I mean I’m happy for you guys and all but if you need a minute—”

                “Breakfast sounds good, Sam,” Dean says, shifting in Cas’ arms so that he’s balanced enough for Cas to help him hobble inside.

                “Dean—”

                “Yeah Sam, yeah, you love me and accept my life choices and blah, blah, sissy girl feelings blah, there better be bacon on the table.”

                And just like that, Sam goes from concerned, sympathetic brother to ultimate bitch-face, grumbling about Dean being able to make his own damn bacon if he’s feeling well enough to shove his tongue down Cas’ throat, and storms back into the cabin.

                Dean and Cas move together, slowly and difficultly, as Cas learns to feel when Dean is about to fall, and Dean learns how to lean his weight into Cas, how to move _with_ him instead of stumbling forward by himself and hoping Cas will keep up. He squeezes his hand once, hard, where it holds Cas’ shoulder, and feels a tightened grip in return on his forearm.

                And he tells himself, this is real.


End file.
